I often refer to the end of Jules Feiffer’s play Little Murders, when a father and his estranged son sit at a window in their New York City apartment, shooting random passers-by. Their wife and mother looks on appreciatively and says something like “It’s so nice to have the family together again.”

This the feeling I got yesterday watching the House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.  The witness was Kimberly Cheatle, Director of the Secret Service, and the attack on her was truly bipartisan. In fact, the outrage was so universal that, if did not know otherwise, you’d often not know to which party an individual speaker belonged.

Yes, it took a terrible situation to bring the family back together.

Cheatle admitted failure in Butler Township Pennsylvania on July 13, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t describe exactly what led to the failure. Sometimes blaming her lack of response on an ongoing investigation,  sometimes on the lack of information at hand, and sometimes not blaming anything in particular, she simply refused to provide a meaningful answer to virtually any question. Not since Donald Trump’s performance at his infamous debate with Joe Biden, have I seen so many questions ignored.

Perhaps the best example of this was the series of questions asked by Virginia Democrat Gerald Connolly, who started with a no-brainer, asking Cheatle if the existence of AK-15s (and the existence of 400 million guns in the country) made the job of the Secret Service harder. This one seems pretty easy, but she hemmed and hawed and tried to say something about how the Secret Service worked in whatever conditions existed at any time, and then saying something about the Second Amendment and so forth. She couldn’t give an easy answer to a soft ball (as they say) question. It reminded me of the three Ivy League school presidents when they testified, and it was just the type of testimony that Congress members of both parties did not want to hear.

The facts seem pretty stark, although that is often the case in hindsight. Why did they let President Kennedy ride in that open convertible? Why didn’t they check the Texas Book Depository when it provided such an obvious place for a shooter? And so forth.

Yes, in every case, it is easy to look back, but today, when the 13th is still fresh in our minds, and the pieces are still being put together, some of the warnings, the general relationship between the podium and the roof, make a failure seem quite apparent. Yes, it seems clear that people saw the shooter and warned officials before the shots were fired, yet no one told Trump to stay away from the podium. No one considered cancelling the rally. And then there was the idea that Secret Service agents don’t go on sloped roofs?

Of course, there may have been some limits on what Cheatle could or should say. There is an ongoing investigation (or perhaps more than one) being undertaken not only by the Secret Service, but the FBI, and you don’t want to say something that could compromise an investigation, but there was no sign that Cheatle and those leading the investigation had talked about what could or could not be said. And you don’t want to compromise the Secret Service with regard to future activities. In other words, you don’t want to give prospective shooters hints as to how the Secret Service operates, so that they will have a better chance of avoiding being stopped from carrying out their plans.

But I didn’t get a sense that this was the driving factor. It appeared that Cheatle, who remember had to be subpoenaed to appear before the Committee, just didn’t want to tell these guys anything. Like she thought it was just none of their business.

I have no doubt that she will soon be out of a job. But that does raise other questions. The Secret Service and its 8000 agents have a lot of responsibility always, and especially in the months preceding a presidential election. Under Cheatles’ leadership, can candidates feel safe? Do they need more protection than they get, or a different kind of protection? Should outside venues be dropped altogether?

And a couple of other questions. Does the leadership of the agency really matter that much? Cheatle said that she did not review individual assignments or venues. And she made it appear that no one does. In response to questions about responsibility for individual events, she talked about different reviews from different perspectives, but made it appear that there was no one person who says: “OK, that’s it We got this one.” If that is correct, is that a failure of Cheatle’s leadership, or is that the way it always has been?

And, if a new leader is appointed 100 days prior to an election, does that harm the agency’s performance while the new leader is just getting his/her feet wet? Which is better, to stick with the unappealing date you came with, or to finish your evening with the cute guy/girl you just happened to meet?

It’s a parlous time (another new word for the blog – parlous), and we gotta be careful.